By Patricia Brown of Patricia L. Brown & Associates posted in Living Together on Sunday, April 14, 2013.

Our firm is seeing an increasing number of unmarried couples, living together, with children seeking a "divorce" and resolve such complexities as custody, support , and visitation. Unmarried couples cannot legally divorce and therein lies the problem. Most lack cohabitation agreements.

On behalf of Patricia L. Brown & Associates posted in Living Together on Monday, October 1, 2012.

If you are male living together with a woman and have a child, what rights do you as an unmarried father have in Texas? To be succinct, the answer is "NONE", without a court order. Even if the father is designated as such on the birth certificate, the father has no enforceable rights. The child's mother is completely within her legal rights to refuse to allow the father to even see the child, let allow visitation or care. This is also true for the father's entire family, so that any grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, etc., would also be unable to have any access without the mother's express permission. However, even if that permission were to be granted, it can be withdrawn arbitrarily at a moment's notice.

By Patricia Brown of Patricia L. Brown & Associates posted in Living Together on Sunday, August 5, 2012.

Many people see prenuptial agreements (prenups) as a poor way to start a marriage because they seem to anticipate its failure. Prenups are also incorrectly viewed as the exclusive province of the rich and famous. But with roughly half of all marriages ending in divorce, getting married without a prenuptial agreement can be a riskier than actually bringing the subject up with your partner.

By Patricia Brown of Patricia L. Brown & Associates posted in Living Together on Tuesday, July 10, 2012.

While living together is growing in all age groups, young people are clearly the leaders. And we have lots of young people around Austin. According to the 2010 census, the 18-34 age group constituted 22% of the U.S. population, and 25% of Texas population, it is a whopping 35% of Austin's population. The majority of young adults in their 20s will live with a romantic partner at least once, and more than half of all marriages will be preceded by cohabitation. I use Austin demographic data as it is a little easier to come by but you can imagine Round Rock and the surrounding communities are similar.

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